Thousands of Student Records Stolen in Florida college security breach
Executive summary: Confidential and sensitive information of nearly 300,000 students and faculty members was stolen in massive security breach in early October. Originally, this breach was thought to be isolated to the students and faculty of Northwest Florida State College but officials fear it may be much worse. Any student who was eligible to receive the Bight Futures Scholarship from 2005 to 2007 may be at risk. The names, social security numbers and birth dates of these students and 200,000 records were stolen in the breach. The attack was thought to come from a sophisticated and coordinated attack of professional hackers. Officials of the Florida college system are trying to reach out to any individual that may have been impacted so they can take any additional security measures to protect their identity and information. Federal authorities have now joined the investigation and have identified at least 50 individuals who have suffered identify theft as a result of this attack. The feds will continue to try and hunt down the origin of this attack.
Analysis: In my opinion there are many things that could have been in order to prevent a security breach of this magnitude. There needed to be better access controls and security blocking this sensitive information from hackers. One such control could have been encrypting the information so that if the hackers were to access it they still could not read it. Better firewalls and network security passwords could also help keep the hackers out in the first place. The attack was thought to have occurred between late May and late September, but they did not discover the breach until mid October. As a result of this late notice, at least 50 people have already suffered identity theft. They need to do a better job monitoring their network and sensitive information in the future so that this type of breach does not happen again.
Thousands of Student Records Stolen in Florida college security breach
Executive summary: Confidential and sensitive information of nearly 300,000 students and faculty members was stolen in massive security breach in early October. Originally, this breach was thought to be isolated to the students and faculty of Northwest Florida State College but officials fear it may be much worse. Any student who was eligible to receive the Bight Futures Scholarship from 2005 to 2007 may be at risk. The names, social security numbers and birth dates of these students and 200,000 records were stolen in the breach. The attack was thought to come from a sophisticated and coordinated attack of professional hackers. Officials of the Florida college system are trying to reach out to any individual that may have been impacted so they can take any additional security measures to protect their identity and information. Federal authorities have now joined the investigation and have identified at least 50 individuals who have suffered identify theft as a result of this attack. The feds will continue to try and hunt down the origin of this attack.
Analysis: In my opinion there are many things that could have been in order to prevent a security breach of this magnitude. There needed to be better access controls and security blocking this sensitive information from hackers. One such control could have been encrypting the information so that if the hackers were to access it they still could not read it. Better firewalls and network security passwords could also help keep the hackers out in the first place. The attack was thought to have occurred between late May and late September, but they did not discover the breach until mid October. As a result of this late notice, at least 50 people have already suffered identity theft. They need to do a better job monitoring their network and sensitive information in the future so that this type of breach does not happen again.